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yoga

Piggybacking on The Mother’s self-discipline (or how I stay in shape)

On a lockdown walk with the Father (while the Mother was doing yoga), Yorkshire, February 2021

We all wondered what the Mother would do when she retired, but none of us imagined that she would become an exercise fanatic. It was inevitable that she would become a fanatic of something, she isn’t someone to do things by halves, but exercise… It’s not that the Mother didn’t exercise, she used to cycle to work every day, but it wasn’t an obsession like it is now.

I am very grateful for the Mother’s current enthusiasm. If I lived alone, or with just my father, I would probably be a lot less fit than I currently am. It’s not my great self-discipline. It’s not my immense will-power. Nope, it’s down to the presence of the ever-yogaing Mother.

By the time I wake up in the morning, she has done three yoga routines

This is because instead of occasionally changing up her routine, the Mother merely adds to it. She started, reluctantly, with a single yoga class when she was still working a normal everyday kind of job, in a normal fashion, as normal people who get advised to strengthen their body or tackle their inflexibility or posture… and then time passed until now, in lock-down, she has become an index of yoga classes and other Eastern traditions.

Overlooking the village, Haworth, Yorkshire , February 2021

Me, however…

I have this great idea that one day I am going to wake up energetically and do ten sun salutations as I used to when I lived in Spain, and it rarely ever happens. But I mention it to the Mother and lo and behold, she does them. When I mention them again three months later, she’s still diligently doing them.

It’s very important to not constantly compare oneself to other people

We all have different bodies. We have different skills and abilities and strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes though, I look at the Mother and instead of thinking ‘I hope I’m in as good a shape as you when I’m your age’, I think ‘why can’t I do that?’ as sometimes I’m the one on my knees in a plank arriving to it late and leaving it early, while she’s holding a beautiful full plank, looking the picture of serenity.

But I am seriously grateful that she’s there, enthusiastically suggesting more videos to do and coming up with stretches and activities that I find myself doing, and therefore find myself becoming capable of.

At the age of 12, I couldn’t touch my toes

And I mean by some considerable distance. But under the Mother’s influence, I can sometimes get my hands flat on the floor. That’s with my legs straight. It’s amazing what you can change with a huge amount of persistence (or a mother like mine).

But seriously, I ache.

Upside-down or downside-up (the yoga class that didn’t go as expected)

Life in Chile is proving to be subtly different, and it’s not just the yoga. Walking along the beach I came across two South American sea lions. Or sea wolves if you want the direct translation.
(Phone) Coquimbo, September 2019.

Here in Chile, I’ve taken up going to a regular yoga class. It’s a tad more spiritual orientated than what I’m used to, with the occasional bit of chanting or prayer thrown in amongst the asanas. I started with a Hatha class, but, because of my timetable, I’ve been doing Ashtanga yoga where the teacher gives each person individualised instructions, and spends the whole session instructing and correcting rather than demonstrating. Now and then, she’ll demonstrate an individual posture, but it’s on an individual basis. During this class the heater is on, blowing warm air over our sweaty bodies.

There are some ladies with incredible flexibility and strength in my class

They might not look much different from other women, but I am envious of what they can do. I have accepted that I am the only person in the class incapable of doing a decent downward dog. Although we don’t call it a downward dog in class, we use the Sanskrit which I can never remember.

Hence when I arrived at the Hatha class yesterday, with a different teacher, and I explained that I’m English I answered that yes, I could speak Spanish, but I had no idea of most the Sanskrit words. This proved not to be a problem as nobody else turned up for class. It was the evening of the 17th and the 18th here is a national holiday.

This didn’t worry the teacher

She had a calm happy yoga face. Thankfully, when she discovered that I was incapable of chanting, she adapted and taught me to ommm at the same time as her. Even her omming was pretty impressive.

The class commenced and feeling a tad self-conscious I proceeded to do as instructed. When it came to my downward dog she pressed on my back and pulled on my heels and managed to stretch my hamstrings in ways I hadn’t expected. We did some sun-salutations, a and b, which, thank the gods, I know. Some warriors including a warrior for which I didn’t know the English name. And I hung upside down on the wall.

I should explain

The earth, you see, is full of negative energy and the heavens full of positive energy so in life it helps to stick your legs in the air from time to time. Get some balance back in your life. Don’t worry, I haven’t gone mad. Energy is energy. It equals mc^2. There are many types of energy, but I save the positives and negatives for charges. Language fails to accommodate the difference between the emotional and the scientific. This earth and heaven interpretation of positive and negative functions to explain something human. Positive and negative emotions perhaps. But I don’t let that interfere with my very human practice of yoga. Pretty much like I don’t feel that god needs to exist to make prayer a worthwhile exercise.

Hanging upside down, I concluded, did make me feel good.

This though is an achievement

As a child, I was not the sort to hang upside down from climbing frames. I became suspicious of my body’s ability to support itself very early on. Since I couldn’t do the monkey bars then putting my feet were above my head would be dangerous.

However, this was a yoga class and the young super-flexible yoga teacher moved my mat to the wall. She took two, securely attached ropes and proceeded to walk up the wall until her feet were above her head.

There was no deep breath and go

Being yoga everything had to take place with a calm and even breathing. I moved slow, breathed steady and found myself hanging upside down. To my amazement, once I was up there, it didn’t seem all that much like hard work.

We continued this yoga class, with me sitting with my back against the wall, bum secure on the floor, legs stretched out in front of me. Another hamstring stretch which I am useless at, or so I thought. But no. Instead, my yoga teacher now explained that she wanted me to do the same position but to turn the whole thing 180 degrees. Although I understood the Spanish, I couldn’t grasp what she could want me to do. Then she showed me.

Oh.

My mind raced through a few scary things that I’ve achieved

Moving to Chile, reading poetry to my students, singing Frere Jacque to French children at the breakfast table. And I decided that trying a new yoga position, with an expert beside me, wasn’t very scary at all. My body had other ideas. I felt afraid to be sure. But my rational brain knows that fear isn’t always helpful and sometimes has to be noted and allowed to pass, like a thought in meditation.

So I placed my head and hands where my heels had been and lifted my legs, placing my feet upon the wall. The teacher moved them to where my head had been.

When I turned the right way round again, I was laughing

The teacher asked if I wanted to try again. I said, “Si.”

This time I got up into position and she challenged me to lift my legs, one at a time. This is almost a headstand I thought, which wasn’t a helpful thought to think because it made me hesitate, but right foot first, I did it anyway.

After class, she asked me how I felt

My face must have been beaming because I was on a high, amazed at what I had achieved. I told her I felt good, I liked the class and I was learning a lot.

It might be quite spiritual in its orientation and not what I’m used to but this yoga class provides a challenge. I need challenge. I need experiences of not what I’m used to. Otherwise, how would I know I could hang upside down from the wall?

A yoga masterclass, this time in Spanish

Sunrise across the salt lagoons at Mar Menor.

My father likes to say that I land on my feet. I like to think it’s the effect of my wonderful, charming personality. I compel people to be wonderful around me. Either way, when I arrived in Spain, I found myself falling straight into the safe hands of the Casera/Landlady.

Our first conversation, back in October, was the twenty-minute drive from the bus station to her house and was inhibited by our lacking language skills, neither of us could speak a sentence of the other person’s language. With another person, this might have led to a very quiet trip, but the Casera is an extroverted Spaniard who believes in good hospitality. We talked the entire way.

A few months on and we can converse in an almost fluid manner. Predominantly I speak Spanish and she speaks English, although we both regularly revert into our own languages for some clarification. Oddly this leads to us taking journeys together where I explain English grammar to her in Spanish and she explains Spanish pronunciation in English. Grammar is a good conversation topic. I like her to keep both hands on the wheel when she’s driving.

Anyway, the Casera is a woman full of life. She’s a national swimming champion, a professional coach and a pilates teacher. She’s also fascinated by some weird branch of yoga called Kundalini, which has some relation to yoga, but as she tells me on a regular basis is more spiritual.

Yesterday, she decided to go to a masterclass in Kundalini. Since she didn’t want to go alone she invited me. She made it more enticing by suggesting that I join her at her sister’s house and spend the afternoon in the large garden there with the puppies and 22 degrees of sunshine. She would cook lunch.

I’m not one to say no to such an offer. Plus, I figured I could write a blog post about it and that would amuse the Mother. I stuffed my book and my leggings in my bag and slathered sun cream on my legs and arms.

I could write about the afternoon, but you’d probably just be jealous. It was tranquil. And is rather overshadowed in my mind by the yoga. Now, I could write about navigational difficulties and getting the time wrong and the Casera forgetting her phone and my phone battery dying, but that would distract from the experience itself.

Eventually we arrived, early, having previously got the wrong time, and were welcomed into the yoga studio. Like other yoga studios, there was a place for depositing bags and shoes, a set of shelves holding mats, cushions, blankets and blocks, gentle music and dimmed lights. I was worried, initially, that the class was going to be just the teacher, the Casera and I, but soon another woman arrived. She looked normal, until she started getting changed into all white and covered her hair in a peculiar little white hat which reminded me of a swimming cap.

The Casera and the teacher clearly knew each other, and conversation was instant and voluble. I was introduced, and the teacher, smiling in a yoga-teacher-who-won’t-be-fazed manner, asked me if I could speak Spanish.

I told him a little. The cogs whirred in his brain. Then he started speaking in English. Not fluent English, but the broken English of someone who is a new but enthusiastic learner and has just realised that this is a grand opportunity to practice. I replied in my mixture of Spanish and English, smiling in a you-can-speak-English grin with regular encouraging nods.

In a gentle, unrushed style we found mats. The teacher made sure that I had everything I needed and asked me about my yoga experience.

The problem with my yoga experience is that I’ve never had a regular teacher. I first did yoga at the gym when I was at school. I did some yoga at university, but it was a large class and there was no specific feedback. I have been on a yoga retreat with the Mother, in which we did some different styles of yoga. I have frequently done yoga from the Mother’s over 50s DVD. And then there was a yoga experience in Germany, in German, a language which I don’t understand. I explained some highlights of this in Spanish, badly. Normally people frown when they don’t understand, but I’m not sure yoga teachers of deeply spiritual strange yoga practices, where they dress in all white, can frown. I was therefore uncertain whether I was understood at all.

The worry I think that the teacher had, I realised later, was that Kundalini yoga is not like other yoga. Asking me about my yoga experience was kind of irrelevant. It was the wrong question. The question they should have asked was about meditation, but they didn’t. The Casera reassured the teacher that I was a meditative, spiritual person, a description which in her English translates as ‘nun-like’ and involves her shutting her eyes and pretending to pray. It’s a subject to avoid when she’s driving.

I was given a card with the chants written on them, the teacher tried to explain, the Casera interjected that I didn’t have to chat, I asked for pronunciation clarification and we began. A gong hung on the wall. I sat on my meditation cushion and copied everyone else.

After a little strange chanting we began a few stretches. The teacher decided that this was the place to practice his English and so the Spanish instructions (which I mostly understood) were supplemented with English. When we got to ‘put your hands on your knees’, the yoga teacher couldn’t remember the word for knee and so paused to ask me. I successfully gave him the word.

However, the weird bending I was then supposed to do flummoxed me. The teacher came over to help. The Casera stopped bending and turned around to help too. The lady across the room kept bending, repeating what I found a strenuous challenge in an elegant manner. If I were her I would have been rolling my eyes at the commotion. The yoga teacher and the Casera wanted me to move my hips in a different way, but as nobody knew the word for hips the Casera resorted to some wild gesturing. Eventually I either got it or they gave up.

We returned to sitting on the floor. From then on, the session focused on meditation. There was no more strange stretching, just sitting very still. My posture was deemed acceptable for this and so we got going.

At this point it’s worth noting that I had no idea when the class ended. It started at half eight, but there was no clock on the wall and I had taken off my watch.

There was a gong. The teacher gonged the gong and I sat with my hands in front of my heart being still. The teacher gonged the gong again and again. I sat still.

A life of travel is very good at teaching you to surrender to the moment. It’s a life of train stations and airports, immigration queues and incomprehensible menus. I regularly don’t understand the conversations I have; the culture surprises me (we don’t greet our yoga teachers with kisses in England); and I’m frequently oblivious as to what I’m supposed to be doing – hence the earlier navigational difficulties.

The gongs kept sounding, every time I thought the chimes might be about to slow down, there would be another gong-g-g-g and after a long time I realised that I was going to be sitting here a while.

When I did Vipassana meditation, which my friends like to describe as cult-like and weird, I could barely sit straight for fifteen minutes. Feeling sorry for me, the people who look after the meditators gave me a back board. Since then I have not really done much Vipassana, it’s quite heavy-going meditation, but I have done some more ‘mindfulness’ style meditations and now have a daily practice. It turns of that if you practice mediation every day then your back does in fact get stronger.

This all might deceive you into thinking that when it comes to meditation I know what I’m doing. This isn’t true. Frequently, I find meditation rather challenging. My mind starts thinking about other things. When it falls into the trap of pondering the past I drag it back out, but when it is excited, creative, or fantasising about the future, I get swept up in my thoughts. Quite frequently I meditate with a little odd chanting meditation – although weirder it’s gentler than a more silent meditation – and instead of just doing what I’m supposed to I spend the time trying to roll an r at the end of every syllable. ‘Sa, ta, na, ma’ becomes ‘SaRR, taRR, naRR, MaRR’. I still can’t roll my r and it rather disrupts the meditation.

The book that I’m reading, Deep Work by Cal Newport, mentions the idea that sometimes, if you want to do something properly, deeply in fact, a good trick is to attack it with a grand gesture. He gives the example of J.K. Rowling, when struggling to finish the Deathly Hallows, moving herself into a hotel. I figure this is what enabled me to do ten days of silent Vipassana. I also believe that a serious Kundalini yoga masterclass, in Spanish, is a pretty grand gesture compared to my normal meditation practice which involves me sitting on my bed for ten minutes.

I think, that last night, kept myself going with the bewilderment that I could.

Then the session got weird. Instead of gongs or chants, which I do at least associate with more spiritually inclined meditation practices, I heard the teacher tell us that he would play a song in English. At first, I didn’t think I could have translated right, but nope, a few moments later, some feel happy some about flowers being reborn started playing from the speakers.

I was now instructed to put my hands on my forehead, and then a little later, just when my arms felt like they might drop off, on my head. Every now and then some English words would interrupt the Spanish, so I knew that I was clearing out my subconscious or whatever else I was supposed to be doing.

When I finally opened my eyes, I discovered that the lady in white had moved to lean against the wall and the Casera had stretched out her legs and moved around in her heap of cushions. I of course was still sat upright on my cushion in my elegant meditation posture.

More meditation followed, this time lying down. At first I didn’t understand the instruction but after a tangential conversation where the Casera explained to the teacher that it was past my bedtime already, and I rolled my eyes, I worked it out. The Casera thinks I’m strange because I still, even after months of living in Spain, insist on going to bed at dinner time. Personally, I’m quite happy with my ten o’clock bedtime and the more I encounter the zombie like Spaniards at work, the more convinced I become that I’m the one with the healthier strategy.

I stretched out my legs, lay down on my mat and covered my body with my blanket. There was another song, this time in some language that was neither Spanish or English, but which occasionally included a random line in English. I lay still, waiting, and then sometime later I started wiggling my toes and my hands, in the typical fashion that one reawakens oneself after such a yogaing, the teacher delighted in saying words like ‘toes’, ‘feet’ and hands’ in English. I smiled encouragingly and sat up. The lady in white continued to sleep and the Casera began making gentle noises to gently wake her.

We were finished. I was relieved to have survived. We expressed gestures of thanks, and then proceeded to, in a very Spanish fashion, leave. Spanish fashion because you can’t simple say thank you and leave in Spain. It is required that you first engage in a lengthy conversation in my case a discussion of why the English language has so many conflicting rules. We chatted about accommodation, rental agreements, the names in English of kitchen appliances, and the state of language learning in Spain.

Eventually, we left. When we arrived back at the car I glanced at my phone and discovered it was after 11.

I might have a tendency of landing on my feet, as my father so claims, but sometimes I have to admit, I land in the most peculiar places.

North Yorkshire: A Yoga Retreat with The Mother (part 2)

Fence and dandilions: North York Moors
Just dandilions growing wild in the North York Moors, a wonderfully wild place.

One of the challenges with yoga (other than the obvious physical challenge) is that it sometimes comes a bit too close to sounding like nonsense. It’s mostly the terminology that is used. Sometimes it’s not very western, and it’s not that of a scientific nature and so I become a little bit unnerved. I do have my reputation as a physics graduate consider. I am, I guess, sceptical of a lot of the phrases used, although I feel that this has as much to do with my lack of biology knowledge as much as my lack of Buddhist or Hindi terminology. I had to ask the mother where my kidneys were, and had no idea what a session of activating my kidney meridians was supposed to achieve. I still don’t.

Anyway, I was contemplating this as I sat on the sofa arm, balancing in that self-assured way that one does after hours of yoga, reading the peculiar titles of the books on the bookshelf. At this point I was wearing my third-eye chakra infused oil between my eyebrows because I’d been gifted it and had no idea what else I was supposed to do with it. I’ve got a multitude of chakras apparently, although I’ve no idea what or why they are. How the oil helps them, or me, I’ve no idea either. It smells like the upstairs of my nanna and grandad’s house did when I was a child.

Most of the rest of the group, there were sixteen of us participants, slowly made their way into the living room, placed themselves three to a sofa, found a beanbag, stood propped against the wall, or sat with upright-spines, cross-legged on the carpet. By this point everyone was hungry waiting for breakfast and in a cheerful chatty mood. The awkward silences of the first day had been replaced with an eagerness to speak and be heard.

The conversation paid a moment’s attention to the retreat owner, Edward. I hadn’t seen him and imagined him to be an older chap, small and bendy who looked like he’d live forever. The fifty-something year old women therefore surprised me with their enthusiasm for learning everything about him, little was known other than he would be willing to deal with spiders as 3am if anyone had a problem. Someone claimed to have a magazine article in their bedroom about him, and everyone wanted to see it. They also wanted to know more about the place itself, how it had come to be a sought-after retreat location, and what else went on there.

Our yoga teacher suggested Edward was a very dedicated man, going so far as to even leading silent retreats. Julie can still give you a massage, but she does so silently as not to break the practice. And then of course, all these women were discussing what would be difficult about a silent retreat and asking how silent exactly silent was. At this point, the chap (remember there were fifteen of us women and one chap) launched into sharing his knowledge. He’d shared a room once with someone who’d completed a ten-day silent meditation retreat somewhere down south. You can imagine the voices of the women, still wearing their patterned leggings and all in bare feet or socks, because shoes weren’t allowed in the house, trying to advertise themselves as the least capable of staying silent for ten days.

What is it with people saying that they can’t do things they’ve never actively tried?

Anyway, I turned around from the bookshelf. The Mother looked at me from across the room with one of those all-knowing looks and I looked back at her. I waited for a sensible pause in the conversation feeling that sitting smugly knowing the answers to their questions but not saying anything, especially when they were so curious, would not be fair.

“I’ve done it,” I said.

Cows. To break up the monotany of the text.

The chap wanted to check that my silent retreat was the same super serious silent retreat that he was talking about. Initially I think he was sceptical. It was. How exactly, everyone seemed to want to know, do you stay silent? Can you write notes?

“You can’t write,” I said. “Or read.”

Their faces looked pained. I tried to explain that the peer pressure of being with so many other non-talking people really did help make the silence easy. Plus, you went in having agreed to the silence, including silence of eye contact.

“But,” I said, “The silence is easy, compared to sitting still.”

Luckily, a few minutes later, the gong sounded, summoning us to breakfast. We didn’t need much summoning. Gracefully and graciously everyone was on their feet and racing towards the dining-room. I was left worrying that everyone was now going to think of me as the weird one, wearing potpourri-scented third-eye chakra oil and doing strange, gender-segregated, vegan-eating, silent retreat.

Just before lunch I finally laid my eyes on the mysterious Edward. He came to give us a gong bath. Don’t worry, we were all fully dressed and most of us were wrapped in blankets too. I realized that he couldn’t have spent 20 years in Indian monasteries and couldn’t have spent time in a cave in Nepal, because he simply was not old enough.

And I suddenly realized why exactly the fifty-something year old women were so enamoured with him. In his shorts and t-shirt, I heard him described as ‘a bit of alright’.


Our teacher was Elizabeth from Lemon Tree Yoga and the retreat was held at The Tree.

North Yorkshire: A Yoga Retreat with The Mother

The glorious view of the North York Moors (and the perfect place for a yoga retreat)

I ache.

I had this grand illusion that on returning from a yoga retreat I would feel all relaxed and at ease. I don’t. I feel like I’ve been to the gym, except for that the muscles that ache seem to be super deep inside of me. Maybe it wasn’t the yoga at all, maybe it was the wonderful Julie and her wonderful hands massaging my body. I don’t know.

It was the Mother’s idea, this yoga retreat experience. She, unlike me, can just drop down to the ground and touch her toes (without bending her legs) at 7 o’clock in the morning. Which was a good thing for her as pre-breakfast yoga started at half seven, in the chapel. The chapel, with its bright white walls and spacious arched windows being the yoga studio for The Tree relaxation centre in the North Yorkshire Moors where we happened to be. Whilst it’s cupboards might now be stacked with yoga mats, meditation poofs and big comfy cushions – do not use if you’re trying to maintain a sense of awareness – it still does play a role within the Methodist community. They borrow it back occasionally for events like their harvest festival.

Due to the Mother, I was awake at half seven and in the chapel. She’d done her first session of yoga, that’s yoga even before the pre-breakfast yoga, in our twin bedroom whilst I slept. When I awoke and pulled back the curtains I was met with a view across the green valley and up to the delicate colours of the moors.

Ten minutes early to the chapel, we were the last to arrive. I tried to look awake and feel as energised and ready to go as my floral legging might have suggested, but their bright colours blended in with everyone else. My yoga companions were eager looking women who looked like half-seven was, for them, a lie in. We did a little breathing and for a moment I imagined I might be able to semi-sleep through the yoga – a bit like I sometimes do with the mother’s ‘over 50s DVD’, but it soon became apparent that this was not going to be the case. We were on a mission to warm up and build an appetite before breakfast.

After breakfast – porridge, fruit, toast – was, as you might guess from a yoga retreat, more yoga. This was followed by a much-needed deep relaxation. It was one of those relaxations where you start by relaxing the crown of your head, your forehead, your face, your neck, shoulders and then fall asleep, waking up just in time for ankles and toes. I blame the big comfy cushion. If I snored, I wasn’t the only one.

Happiness is not a destination. It is a way of life.
Read and be wise.

Lunch followed – soup, salads and cheese and biscuits – and another round of camomile tea, decaf green tea, decaf coffee, caffeinated coffee, decaf tea, caffeinated tea, etc. etc. Then there came the afternoon. It started with a short walk for the Mother and me. Then followed the dip in the hot tub, which was in a little cabin, with wide windows overlooking the moors, fairy lights twinkling in the ceiling. The clock on the wall which instead of numbers simply said ‘now’. As you might expect the retreat centre was one of those places with cute lines about happiness being more than just a destination, or there only being the present moment, hanging off nails and scribbled across walls in abundance.

Cake awaited us back inside the house. Homemade blueberry scones and a super light lemon cake which I may have had a second slice of (yes, we’ve picked up the recipe). I asked for a fork for my cake because it was one of those places where you felt comfortable sticking your head in through the kitchen door and speaking to one of the super friendly, highly talented chefs. Also, cake should be eaten with a fork. It’s proper.

Then came my appointment to visit Julie. She put me at ease within seconds, making me feel totally comfortable as I quickly briefed her on my tendency to have a panic attack if I’m uncomfortable with a touch, but she knew exactly what she was doing and made me feel safe. Quite a skill.

The next couple of hours I spent in an excessively relaxed daze, reading a few pages of my book and testing out the variety of herbal teas. Then it was dinner time. The kitchen produced a hearty vegetarian shepherd’s pie (we have the recipe for this too). I concentrated on staying upright and awake. The rest of the table chattered along merrily, comparing notes about their professions (either teaching or nursing) and, if they had them, their children. The children mentioned all appeared to be aged twenty-seven. Nurses and teachers, mothers of twenty-seven-year-old children obviously were the retreat’s target audience. I was the only twenty-seven-year-old daughter. There was one chap, but he knew a thing or two about yoga and was obviously used to going on retreats dominated by women.

These jolly ladies, peacefully stretched and thoroughly massaged, debated the merits of 80’s fashion and food and tried to convince me that I had missed out. I pointed out that there was something beneficial about not having to record your music off the radio onto a cassette tape, but they shook their heads and smiled. They bounced into discussing the wonders of angel delight. I stared at them in horror.

The evening finished with candle gazing. This involved us returning to the chapel, sitting on our mats and staring at a tealight whilst trying not to blink too much. Your eyes are supposed to water lots. The teacher had tissues at the ready. Theoretically, it’s supposed to be good for calming hay fever, but I couldn’t really say as I spent most of my time failing not to blink and therefore my eyes barely watered at all.

We walked back from chapel to retreat house, staring up at the stars that hung brightly above the open moors, before climbing into bed.

And all that was only Saturday.

Our teacher was Elizabeth from Lemon Tree Yoga and the retreat was held at The Tree.

Germany: ein hund, ein cobra but no English

I’m not entirely sure how it came about as an arrangement. However, the deal was I’d write a blog post if Jesska took me to yoga.

Seeing that I was with Jesska, and that I was new, the super flexible soft spoken yoga teacher came over to say hello. Jesska introduced me as her friend from England

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?”

I know enough German to say ‘nein’, but in that moment, my brain failed.

There was a brief exchange of thoughts between Jesska and the teacher, before Jesska explained I should move mats so that I would have the best chance of seeing what was going on. Because yes, I’d agreed to do yoga in a language I do not speak.

Now I’d always thought of German as a harsh sounding language

However, in the mouth of the yoga teacher, it was soft. We laid down on our yoga mats to the sound of typical calming yoga music. Everything smelt of incense. Pretty soon I was feeling relaxed, and my pre-yoga nerves had dissipated. As I focused on what I was doing, it occurred to me that actually understanding what was being said didn’t matter so much. If I’d never done yoga before, I might have had some difficulties, but a downward ‘hund’ is a downward dog and a cobra is a cobra.

All I had to do was copy

In fact, sometimes I found myself ahead of the rest of the class as sometimes the verbal instruction followed the teacher’s movement.

It was all going well until she stopped demonstrating and started walking around the classroom. I’d focused on watching so intensely that I had completely failed to memorise the routine, so now I found myself having to copy the other students. Of course, all the students’ movements looked slightly different from one another.

As the teacher walked around she corrected our poses

I felt her hand on my back giving me some small prods and a gentle push here. Moving me into a better position. Then there was the additional helpful miming. She demonstrated ‘put your head on your folded arms’ with a purposeful stare in my direction.

Jesska says that occasionally she’s add a word in English. I missed these English prompts entirely. I had no idea the teacher had said them until Jesska asked if an up dog was the same as a downward dog in the car on the way home. No, but I appreciated the effort.

The surprise came right at the end of the session

We lay down, covered in our blankets, ready for the compulsory post yoga nap – chavasana – and closed our eyes. That’s when I heard the teacher putting on her hand-cream.

Odd time for moisturising your hands, I thought.

And then, suddenly, I found that the intense smell of this magic hand cream was making itself intimately acquainted with my head, neck and shoulders. I was being anointed.

Would you try a yoga class in a language you don’t speak?